SOUTH African filmmaker Rehad Desai’s Miners Shot Down scooped the jury’s first prize at the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, (FESPACO) Africa’s premier film and TV festival.
This is the first win for a South African documentary at this biannual event which has run for more than 45 years. The documentary competition included films from 19 countries.
The film focuses on the Marikana massacre of 2012, where 34 miners were killed and more than 100 injured. It has been described as “devastating cinema” and a heart-wrenching film that resonates far beyond its borders.
Last month the film won the Cinema for Peace Justice Award, which is designed to single out the most valuable film in the fight for social and legal justice produced in the world during 2014.
It also won the audience prize in January at the prestigious Black Movie Film Festival in Switzerland, where it competed with 60 other documentary and fiction films from around the world.
The FESPACO award is the 11th the film has won.